


Caring is not an Advantage

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes learns something new for the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caring is not an Advantage

The thumping of a heart serves as an ample reminder of life. It is always there- a constant beat in the background, so diegetic that it is barely noticeable. Mycroft’s own heart beats just as any others, unlaboured despite his brother’s jibes. It is a muscle, and it throbs with the effort of pushing blood around his body. Mycroft is a machine in that he has components and they work constantly to produce him as he is- a functioning human being. There are few complications in this machine. At one point, when the machine was still increasing in size, learning to function as it should, the upper components had begun to fail, causing a stutter when he spoke. Some minor tinkering, however, and the machine functioned correctly. 

Mycroft’s brain, however, is not a machine- no machine in current existence could ever function at the speed, accuracy, and range that Mycroft’s brain can. The regular human brain can function on many planes; the brain can be thinking about many things at the same time. Mycroft’s brain can think about at least twice as many things as the regular brain, but he is constantly aware of his heart beating. He can always hear it. 

It stutters, just like his eight year old voice, and he clutches at the corner of his desk. This has never happened. His brain scans through the possibilities, diagnoses, but all the while he is listening to his heart. It is not functioning. Something is wrong. The possibilities narrow. Words flashing around his mind become fewer and fewer until-  
Heart attack. 

How bizarre, he muses, all the while lowering himself to the ground. There has always been the curiosity there; the what if, the I wonder, the what is it like. Now he is collecting data, checking his pulse, feeling the pain in his left arm. He is categorising, testing, understanding, and it is a subject that he has not had the chance to explore before. The machine is failing. He is dying. He is learning about death. 

The strangest part of this new experience, Mycroft decides, is that he is fully aware. He had expected, foolishly, to die by bullet, or poison, or torture- in enough pain not to be coherent. He is however, perfectly capable of diction as Anthea is on her knees, laying him on the floor, uttering comforts and assurances, and cutting his waistcoat and shirt open. The machine is ceasing movement, and his muscles have lost any ability to move at all, but he can speak, and he does. 

There are sirens in the distance already, but Mycroft is speaking as quickly as the failing body that he lives in will allow. Secrets are passed between them, plans, codes, and while Anthea is being cautiously hopeful, Mycroft is saying goodbye. The pain is spreading, and Mycroft relates the pain to a visual image for Anthea. A spider’s web, like his very veins are pushing liquid pain throughout his body- though with no assistance from the component in the centre of his chest that is failing him so. He tells her, using this image, that his heart is the spider, and explains that when a spider dies, its web- his veins, of course- waste away. 

He has never seen Anthea cry, and he doesn’t expect it now, though he has his occasional doubts about her impassivity. She does not cry, she does not panic; Anthea uses chest compressions, talks to Mycroft, requests his continued speaking. Mycroft complies for as long as he is able, though it seems after a while that he must have stopped, because she is slapping his cheeks between compressions. 

One rib cracks, and the machine convulses in protest, but there are other hands by this point, and these pin him to the carpet, and then there is Anthea, hands cupping Mycroft’s face. She is apologising, talking, but her words stop meaning anything.

Mycroft retreats to his mind. He can see the world around him but it no longer registers to him what is happening. He can feel his ribs cracking under compressions, the shocks from electric paddles, but the pain seems distant from his mind. 

In his mind, Mycroft prefers to think. Or, rather, he allows himself to imagine. If he were older, free of his job, he would move to the coast, perhaps an island. He would walk the sand, the hills around it, and he would be alone. He could swim in the ocean, sleep in the day. At dawn he would watch the sun cut ribbons through the bay. 

He is still standing at the shore, suited, watching the grapefruit sun rise, when they stop trying to fix his machine. Reality is fading, the machine is allowing the last dregs of power to wisp away, and Mycroft Holmes stands alone on a beach, digging his toes recklessly into the sand.

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat works well with (in my opinion) We Don't Eat- James Vincent McMorrow.


End file.
